Differing waste policies may discourage investment

The devolvement of the UK government could discourage investment in the waste and recycling industry, according to David Perchard, managing director of consultancy Perchards.

However,Mr Perchardsaid there were opportunities to be had as different policies could allow for new ideas to be tested before they are rolled out across the UK.

The comments came at the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisations (Alupros) Seminar 2012, which took place at the National Motorcycle Museum near Birmingham on Tuesday (October 30).

Other speakers at the event included Paul Vanston, manager of the Kent Waste Partnership; John Redmayne, managing director of Hampshires Project Integra; Claire Shrewsbury, programme area manager for WRAP; and, Michelle Dow, from Mersey and Cheshire STEM.

Discussing the impact of devolved governments on the waste industry, Mr Perchard raised concerns about increasing costs for businesses which operate throughout the UK.

He said: The challenges of devolved governments include an increase in costs and complexities, for example those which will be presented by the changes to the Scottish PRN system. We get the added difficulty of business forecasting when processes are affected by several sets of elections which may have different drawbacks and cause uncertainty over whether certain processes will be rolled out across the UK. This uncertainty may discourage investments as well as voluntary initiatives.

Commenting further on proposed changes to the PRN system in Scotland (see letsrecycle.com story) he added that this could present serious problems for implementation and compliance in a single UK market. However he said that Wales and Northern Irelands policies were manageable.

The Scottish Governments proposals for the PRN system have previously come under attack from retailers who claim it would place significant burdens and costs (see letsrecycle.com story).

Opportunities

Despite the challenges facing the UK due to devolved policies, Mr Perchard said there were opportunities to be had. He said: Looking at the opportunities, in principle its a test bed for new ideas in relatively small jurisdictions before rolling them out across the UK if it’s successful. For example the carrier bag charging scheme.

Wales became the first country in the UK to introduce a minimum 5p charge for plastic carrier bags in October 2011 (see letsrecycle.com story). Northern Ireland is set to follow suit from April 2013, while Scotland has recently closed a consultation on introducing a charge for single-use carrier bags.

However Mr Perchard said that political envy may not allow enough time for lessons to be learnt as governments are sometimes eager to take action after seeing that others have acted.